The Ancient Regime eBook

and who act accordingly. “Whatever orders
may be given them not to take anything, not to make
the inhabitants feed them, or to enter taverns with
collectors,” habit is too strong “and
the abuse continues."[25] But, burdensome as the bailiff’s
men may be, care is taken not to evade them.
In this respect, writes an intendant, " their obduracy
is strange.” " No person,” a receiver
reports,[26] “pays the collector until he sees
the bailiff’s man in his house.”
The peasant resembles his ass, refusing to go without
being beaten, and, although in this he may appear
stupid, he is clever. For the collector, being
responsible, “naturally inclines to an increase
of the assessment on prompt payers to the advantage
of the negligent. Hence the prompt payer becomes,
in his turn, negligent and, although with money in
his chest, he allows the process to go on."[27] Summing
all up, he calculates that the process, even if expensive,
costs less than extra taxation, and of the two evils
he chooses the least. He has but one resource
against the collector and receiver, his simulated
or actual poverty, voluntary or involuntary.
“Every one subject to the taille,” says,
again, the provincial assembly of Berry, “dreads
to expose his resources; he avoids any display of
these in his furniture, in his dress, in his food,
and in everything open to another’s observation.”
— “M. de Choiseul-Gouffier,[28] willing
to roof his peasants’ houses, liable to take
fire, with tiles, they thanked him for his kindness
but begged him to leave them as they were, telling
him that if these were covered with tiles, instead
of with thatch, the subdelegates would increase their
taxation.” — “People work, but
merely to satisfy their prime necessities. . .
. The fear of paying an extra crown makes an
average man neglect a profit of four times the amount."[29]
— “. . . Accordingly, lean cattle,
poor implements, and bad manure-heaps even among those
who might have been better off."[30] — " If I
earned any more,” says a peasant, “it
would be for the collector.” Annual and
illimitable spoliation “takes away even the desire
for comforts.” The majority, pusillanimous,
distrustful, stupefied, “debased,” “differing
little from the old serfs,[31]” resemble Egyptian
fellahs and Hindoo pariahs. The fisc, indeed,
through the absolutism and enormity of its claims,
renders property of all kinds precarious, every acquisition
vain, every accumulation delusive; in fact, proprietors
are owners only of that which they can hide.